arisandmartha is the creative collaboration between dancers, performers and dance makers Aris Papadopoulos and Martha Pasakopoulou. Based in Athens, Greece they work at the crossroads of staged and site-specific dance performances, exploring and expanding the choreographic possibilities by implementing dance and performing languages, text and conceptual ideas. The duo investigates the notions of togetherness and performing friendship on stage, re-enactment and ready-made materials, contemporary ritualistic practices and strategies of activating and performing archives.

While following individual artistic paths arisandmartha began working together in 2016 bringing their interests and aesthetics into a common discussion, particularly investing in composition, rhythm, absurd imagery, awkwardness and fragmentation in order to make works which activate the archive of research material and open up a field of potentiality which unfolds and is being performed live on stage. Flexible and open to the double identity of performer – maker their work explores the ever occurring challenge of discovering new creative grounds with each performative encounter.

They have produced the works ‘they returned regularly, each time for more’ (2023), OUT OF SPRING (2022), ALL THAT MATTER or notes on performing friendship (2021-22), Lucy. tutorial for a ritual (2019), Five Steps to Save the World (2018) and touching.just (2018). With the latter they have been selected as Aerowaves 2018 Artists and toured in Greece and Europe, through the EDN and Aerowaves networks. arisandmartha have presented work at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival 2018, the 25th Kalamata International Dance Festival 2019, The Place – London, Zurcher Theater Spektakel, Aerowaves 2018 – Sofia, Festival Artdanthé – Paris, Conformazioni Festival- Palermo amongst others.

Parallel to produced work, arisandmartha runs an ongoing choreographic research project under the title IN-QUARRY. The project draws from the embodied experience of practicing and performing public space and the urban landscape. Its aim is to map, document and process the embodied experiences and practices acquired in public space of an abandoned quarry in the suburbs of Αthens, now serving as a leisure park. Simultaneously it seeks to develop new research tools, to diversify choreographic practice, to discover new approaches on human and other-than-human spatial interactions and to connect with other artistic and scientific fields.

arisandmartha have been supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (2018-24), KLAP Maison pour la danse – Marseille (2018), FLUXUM Foundation – Geneva (2019), Flux Laboratory Athens (2019), GARAGE Performing Arts – Corfu (2018), Duncan Dance Research Center – Athens (2018-23), and Onassis AiR, Athens (2022-23). They have both been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS. Aris is an Onassis AiR Fellow (2020).